Ubuntu launch marred by website woes

Open then shut

Ubuntu's website has been flaking out on and off throughout today as its users attempt to download the latest free, open source desktop, laptop, client, and server Linux distribution.

Version 7.04 was supposed to be available for download from the Ubuntu website today. However, users would have been hardpressed to actually get a download going - although the site is intermittently coming back to life.

Pingdom, which monitors website downtime activity through a distributed network of clients, told The Register "the Ubuntu website has been unresponsive most of the day".

According to Pingdom's Gigrib stats, the Ubuntu website has suffered downtime for nearly seven hours.

The longest outage so far appeared to be around lunchtime central European time, which adds water to the theory that higher than expected traffic caused the site to fall over.

The latest desktop addition had been touted by Ubuntu as having new features which include wireless networking support and improved multimedia support.

Canonical, the commercial sponsor of the increasingly popular, free alternative to money-grabbing operating systems, also appears to be having website problems at the moment and is currently displaying a "service temporarily unavailable" message.

El Reg has contacted both Ubuntu and Canonical to find out what's causing all the problems, but no one was available at time of going to press. ®